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He went on, either oblivious to how little the crowd was laughing or in spite of it. “And pickled herring? Which word makes it sound less appealing?”

Still no laughter. I watched his smile fade a single watt.

I don’t know how to explain what happened next. All I know is that seeing his smile fade stirred something in me. And it wasn’t glee, the way it probably would have been back in Vermont. Whatever it was, it made me want to do something, anything, to make that (irritating) (obnoxious) (dazzling) smile return to its former brightness.

So that’s how I found myself onstage next to him. I don’t remember getting up and walking over there and clambering up the low edge of the stage; my memory just blinks and it’s like I teleported from my seat to the spotlight. It was shocking, but not as shocking as my appearance seemed to be for Seth. He just gaped at me, apparently forgetting how to speak.

Giving me the opportunity to take over. “I met his mother for the first time recently,” I said. “And she managed to wriggle the mention of Jewish grandchildren into our very first conversation.”

No reaction from the audience. Maybe I should have set the scene more. Worked in context. Isn’t that what they said about comedy? That it’s all in the context? Or maybe that was just my panicked brain throwing up smoke signals for rescue.

Seth seemed to pick them up. “To be fair, we’d make beautiful babies.”

Heat crept up my neck. I was aware that I should be responding, but all my words seemed to have temporarily fled.

Seth added hastily, “Not that we’re going to. My mom can comment all she wants.”

The heat didn’t recede. My neck and ears had to be bright red by now. “But maybe we will,” I said, nudging him as if to say, Fake relationship, remember? “Either way, it’s not her business. Anybody else get pressured by their Jewish mothers for grandchildren? It’s a stereotype for a reason, right?”

I’d hoped that would get at least one exasperated kid to raise their hand, but nope, nada, nothing. The humiliation was acute, kept my ears and throat burning, but somehow it didn’t feel as heavy as I would have expected. Maybe because Seth and I were going through it together. “Tough crowd,” I said. Why didn’t comedy still have a giant cane that came out of the wings to yank people who were bombing offstage? “So, anyway, gefilte fish?”

I have no memory of the rest of our set. For all I know, Seth and I could have stood up there and recited the ABC’s over and over until the painful silence made us pass out from the embarrassment and somebody was finally kind enough to drag us offstage and dump us in a pile in front of the building. Outside, in air cold enough to chill some of the scorching humiliation from my cheeks, I started, “Well, that was—”

“Amazing, right?” Seth finished, which had actually been nothing near what I was going to say, unless maybe I’d decided to go with amazingly terrible, or amazingly dreadful. “I haven’t had a rush like that since college.”

“You’re joking, right?” I said. I began walking away from the comedy club in a random direction, not caring where I was going as long as it was away. “We bombed up there. It was horrible.”

My back was to him, so I couldn’t see his expression, only the crowds of people dressed in far too few clothes for the weather and the cars rolling through puddles of slush in the road, but I imagined him looking bashful and unassuming as he spoke. “So what if we bombed? It was still exciting to be up there. Sometimes you have to try new things.”

“Is that why you went up there? To try new things? To see if maybe somehow you’d gotten good at stand-up comedy?”

“Oh, no, I knew I’d be terrible, and I was indeed correct when I said I didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to bomb in front of a crowd, because I feel a little like I want to throw up,” he said cheerfully. “But my date said that she’d rather go back in time to see my first bomb than go back in time to kill Hitler, and I figured a desire that strong couldn’t be left unmet.”

This time, no amount of chilly breeze or frozen sleet dripping from the eaves of restaurants could be enough to soothe the fire in my cheeks. “Well, who wouldn’t make that choice?” I mumbled. Maybe he couldn’t hear me over the sound of all these people going to restaurants and bars and clubs, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak up. “A chance to see an extremely annoying person humiliate himself in front of a crowd, or getting all bloody and gross?” I paused. “Also, of course I would kill Hitler if I had the chance.”

He continued on as if I hadn’t spoken. Which in his mind maybe I hadn’t, because he hadn’t heard me. I was kind of relieved—I hadn’t meant to call him annoying.

Not that he wasn’t. Of course he was.

Anyway, he said, “I couldn’t believe that you came up and joined me. Why did you come up there? I thought you, and I quote, ‘couldn’t think of anything less appealing than getting up in front of a crowd and trying to make them laugh.’ ” He paused and considered. “To be fair, I guess we didn’t actually make anybody laugh.”

This was the first time I really got to think hard about why I’d done it. I’d looked up there at Seth bombing, at the crowd wincing at how bad he was, and I’d imagined how it would feel for that to be me. I’d be shrinking with humiliation, paralyzed with it, especially going through it alone.

And I hadn’t wanted Seth to go through it alone.

I sighed. “I guess I…care about your feelings or something? And I didn’t want you to suffer up there by yourself?”

We stopped at a crosswalk. It was getting quieter around us now, the streets of restaurants and bars transforming into streets of stately brownstones twinkling with classy red and green and white lights. “Wow,” Seth mused. “I’m so touched. For what it’s worth, I’m really glad you’re my friend, Abby.”

Wait. Not all of the brownstones were twinkling with Christmas lights. In the middle of the block, one beautiful building hung heavy with strings of blue and white. We stopped in front of it to see in the window a gleaming bronze menorah, its four candles flickering low.

I was glad he was my friend, too. Not that I would ever say it aloud.

But, because he was my friend, he knew not to try to make me. He slung his arm over my shoulders. Instinctively, I leaned into him, and we stood there like that for a second, drinking in each other’s warmth.

It was normal, for a fake relationship. We were performing the image of a loving boyfriend and girlfriend for anybody who happened to be around.

I chose not to think about how there wasn’t anybody else there.